Re: Odyssey Questions

From: sjoerd@cs.vu.nl (Sjoerd Schreuder)

Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000

jhalpern@newbridge.com (Joel Halpern) writes:

>Does anyone have Unix based tools for simplifying play of Odyssey/Heroquest?
>For phoenix there is some very nice software that takes all the turn reports
>and produce nice postscript maps.

Not that I know of. I've made a (simple) script that takes turn reports
and produces a postscript map which automaticly scales to use
the full paper size. One only has to edit one line (halfway the file ;-( )
to indicate which area has to be displayed. All in all, it's not user
friendly, but it's still improving. (I don't have a color printer here,
so I can't test color stuff. It would be easier to make forest green,
in stead of drawing some trees)

>That much would be nice.  Something that could tell me more, interactively,
>would be even nicer.  (While I once was a programmer, I am so out of practice
>that offering to write these myself would be a mistake.  I'll be happy to help
>with debug/beta-testing if someone else writes them.  I can still read most
>any language you want to use.)

Try to make html out of your turn reports and all data you collect.
Then you can use any www viewer and be able to find all info on any subject.

I've been thinking about a program too, but it's not easy to scan/parse
the turn reports: the layout is important in several cases,
take a look at the spell list of characters, while in other cases
one wants to skip all whitespace. Further, it requires lots of
file reading/writing to update the database. Lastly, it needs
a viewer to view the collected information. (And some data
is the same from game to game, while other data is different)

If anyone is interested in writing such a program, please contact me:
we should cooperate our efferts in order to make a better program.
I prefer C (or C++, but the resulting executables are huge),
but am able to program in almost any language (even Postscript ;-)

Sjoerd Schreuder
Sjoerd@cs.vu.nl

References

Odyssey Questions
jhalpern@newbridge.com (Joel Halpern)
Tue, 19 Sep 1995 00:00:00 +0000